PMC Tagging Guidelines Accessibility Updates

The PMC Tagging Guidelines (TG) were updated on October 7, 2024, to provide new guidance for PMC data providers on how to deposit accessible article information using Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) XML. This guidance aligns with accessibility recommendations from JATS for Reuse, a working group under NISO. This recommendation bases its set of tagging best practices on the following definition: "Accessibility is the practice of ensuring there are minimal barriers to access and interact with websites and other electronic information for users with physical or situational disabilities." The newly added Accessibility section provides an overview summarizing these recommendations and provides links to over 30 elements and document objects throughout the TG. For ease of identification, each updated TG area has an "Accessibility" section that provides guidance. PMC's operations team will be engaging with publisher and data providers to encourage adoption of this guidance to improve the digital accessibility of articles that are deposited into PMC over the long term.